We live in a communication age that embraces abbreviations and acronyms as a natural secondary language. Our emotions and reactions are reflected in “LOLs” and emojis on a regular basis. […]

At AAPC’s annual Healthcon conference in Orlando, Florida, Dr. David Zielske (also known as Dr. Z) had a session on Interventional Radiology, Cardiology and Vascular Surgery coding. As you can […]

During the first 12 months of ICD-10, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) was lenient with ICD-10 coding specificity to allow providers to become accustomed to the new […]

Donna: Sue, do you remember when we started our blog back in 2012? Didn’t the idea present itself at a conference we were attending? Sue: Yes, it did! We were […]

The ball dropped, we tossed out our old calendars, and many of us made the traditional promises to ourselves in the New Year. Whether it’s trimming off those few extra […]

Our team’s last post introduced a metric we call “Coder Variability.” As a quick recap, it is an attempt to measure how much variation there is among coders at a facility. […]

I have been told since the start of my coding career (21 years gasp!), that there are no coding emergencies. That it won’t “hurt” to wait until the next day […]

Are you ready for Monday’s solar eclipse? Are you in the path of totality? What time does it start in your area? Do you have your solar viewing glasses? What […]

One of the things I most enjoy about the team I work with is that we get to ask a lot of questions and then we try to figure out […]

Modifiers help tell the story of what the provider did or didn’t do, but too often we get confused when to use the right ones; I like to call it “Modifier Madness.” Just when you think you have it figured out, you find some new information that makes you second guess how you have been using it! I am no different than anyone else, and I love learning, so I thought let’s tackle this thing together[…]

The CPT changes for 2017 brought a surprise, at least for me. You may have noticed a trend over the last several years of consolidation within the codeset. When two […]

Donna: Eh Sue. What did you think of our experience in Canada reviewing charts for accurate coding? Sue: I would say that they have a similar challenge to ours in […]